Laptops, and increasingly other electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs, smart phones (e.g. Blackberry™, iPhone™), memory sticks, personal media devices (e.g. iPod™), gaming devices, tablet computers, electronic books and personal computers, are often remotely tracked so that, for example, they can be recovered in the event of theft, children using them can be monitored, and for other purposes. Such tracking may be effected by sending location information to a remote storage site, an email server or a personal mobile electronic device.
Furthermore, many people wish to use location based services provided through their mobile devices.
In many cases, the location of a mobile device is determined by detecting local Wi-Fi access points, retrieving locations of those access points from a database and then performing a calculation to determine the likeliest location of the mobile device. Such Wi-Fi databases are often compiled and maintained by war-driving, and include calculated locations of each access point.